Gramsci and Saussure: Similarities and Possible Links · Gramsci and Saussure: Similarities and Possible Links 5 Isonomia 2010 on what should have been his thesis «on the history

2010 Dipartimento di Filosofia

Università di Urbino

Isonomia

Gramsci and Saussure: Similarities and Possible Links

Alessandro Carlucci

Royal Holloway, University of London

[email protected]

Abstract

Few books from the first half of the twentieth century have exerted the same long-lasting,

interdisciplinary influence as Antonio Gramsci‘s Prison Notebooks and Ferdinand De

Saussure‘s Course in General Linguistics. The former is the work of a political leader and

philosopher who is now widely appreciated by scholars in the humanities and social sciences,

including several scholars in language studies; while the latter is the work of a linguist who, at

least as the initiator of linguistic structuralism, has been regarded as a fundamental author and

source of inspiration by many anthropologists, sociologists, social theorists, and political

philosophers. Both the Course and the Notebooks were published after the authors‘ deaths. The

first edition of the Course in General Linguistics was published in 1916. Are there any links

between the ideas expressed in this book and those of Gramsci, who wrote his Prison

Notebooks between 1929 and 1935? Although no documentary evidence exists confirming that

Gramsci read the Course, some passages from his writings bear striking resemblances to the

contents of Saussure‘s posthumous work. I shall argue that events in Gramsci‘s life can be held

responsible for these resemblances. Between 1911 and 1926, he studied linguistics at Turin

University and came into contact with early Soviet cultural life, residing in Russia twice in the

early 1920s. Soviet linguists were then discussing the ideas contained in the Course, and post-

revolutionary cultural life was, on the whole, quite receptive towards these ideas. Therefore, it

is likely that they became part of the cultural milieu which influenced the development of

Gramsci‘s thought.

mailto:[email protected]

2 Alessandro Carlucci

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Two productive trends in recent research on Gramsci

Researchers into the life and work of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-

1937) are still assimilating the great variety of debates which took place in 2007, the

seventieth anniversary of Gramsci‘s death. During this year, numerous events were held

in many different countries, including some important international conferences.

Themes that have, traditionally, been more frequently investigated continue to attract

wide interest – in such fields as history, philosophy, and political theory. But there are

also innovative studies, which reflect new perspectives and a focus on previously less

analysed subjects. As emerged during the events of 2007, one line of study which

currently appears to be particularly productive, and is likely to witness further

expansion in the future, concerns the analysis of Gramsci‘s sources1. I shall contribute

to this research trend by adopting a non-reductive, culturalist approach. In tracing the

origins of Gramsci‘s reflections and concepts, I will not so much try to produce

evidence, based solely on the bibliographical references which can be found in

Gramsci‘s writings, of the direct influence which a particular author exerted on him.

Rather, I will try to place Gramsci within some of the cultural networks of his historical

period. However, this does not mean that a phylogenetic relationship can be established

based on merely impressionistic, or altogether arbitrary observations. Often, a sufficient

number of ―clues‖ makes it possible to infer that Gramsci‘s cultural experiences resulted

in his being influenced by a particular author, or group of authors. Only when this is the

case will such influence be discussed, regardless of how direct or conscious it might

have been.

In the present article, I shall combine this trend with another field of study which

also seems open to new contributions and to be potentially capable of boosting

Gramscian studies considerably. This field of study consists of research with a specific

focus on language, and was initially conducted by Luigi Rosiello and few other

scholars, until the publication, in 1979, of Lingua, intellettuali, egemonia in Gramsci,

by Franco Lo Piparo – a groundbreaking book which cast light on the role that

linguistics played in the formation of Gramsci‘s thought, and especially on his

innovative conception of hegemony. Even though Lo Piparo‘s work was followed by

Gramsci and Saussure: Similarities and Possible Links 3

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articles and book chapters by Tullio De Mauro, Leonardo Salamini, Niels Helsloot,

Klaus Bochmann, and others, this research has not reached an adequately wide public,

even amongst Gramscian scholars, nor does it seem to have explored all the aspects

which emerged from the work of those scholars and, in more recent years, from that of

Peter Ives and Derek Boothman. However, all the authors mentioned so far have indeed

succeeded in establishing two specular interpretative trends. One trend aims at giving

language-related reflections the right place in Gramsci‘s thought, while the other wants

«to give Gramsci his due place in the history of linguistic thought»2.

My contribution to the research outlined in the previous paragraphs focuses on

some of the ideas which the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), the

founder of linguistic Structuralism, expressed in his hugely influential Course in

General Linguistics3. The ideas contained in this book have not only influenced

language studies; in the course of the twentieth century, they have also attracted the

attention of scholars interested in redefining the epistemological foundations of research

in the humanities, and in the social and political sciences.

Gramsci‘s Prison Notebooks, written between 1929 and 1935, have enjoyed a

similarly wide, multidisciplinary reception. The first affinity which comes to the fore,

when discussing these two books, is of a rather extrinsic nature: they were both

published after the authors‘ deaths (in a form which had not been worked out for

publication by either Saussure or Gramsci), and are largely based on fragmentary notes

whose correct understanding editors and interpreters have long been discussing. In a

sense, this explains their influence in different historical periods and disciplinary fields.

The fact that they are not organic, fully revised works would seem to have enhanced

their adaptability to different interpretations and appropriations. My article, however, is

aimed at showing that there might be some intrinsic connections between the two

works; or, more precisely, that Gramsci‘s reflections on language might owe something

to the influence of Saussure‘s Course in General Linguistics.

I will begin by briefly reconstructing the role of language studies in Gramsci‘s

intellectual biography. A discussion will follow of some significant passages from his

writings, which are particularly reminiscent of Saussure‘s approach. Later, after a

methodological section on the different ways in which the links between Gramsci and

Saussure can be studied, I shall discuss the channels through which the former may


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have been influenced by the Course in General Linguistics. I shall conclude my article

by tentatively making some general comments on the relationship between Saussure‘s

Structuralism and Gramsci‘s Marxism, and on the outstanding influence which the latter

continues to exert.

Gramsci’s training in linguistics and language-related subjects

Gramsci was born in the village of Ales, in central Sardinia. This was a rural,

backward, poverty-stricken, and culturally marginal area. However, local intellectual

production was not insignificant in Ghilarza, a small town near Ales where Gramsci

spent most of his childhood. Here he came into contact with a priest, Michele Licheri,

who was interested in linguistics and in the study of dialects and folkloric culture4. After

moving to Turin (in 1911) to study at the local university, Gramsci did not forget Father

Licheri, and when needing information about Sardinian dialects, he wrote to his sister

Teresina and asked her to consult him as a reliable, qualified source5.

In Cagliari, while still a high-school student, Gramsci caught the attention of one

of his teachers, Raffa Garzia. Garzia was the editor of the daily newspaper L’Unione

Sarda (still published today) and also a fine connoisseur of the history and language of

Sardinia6. It was thanks to this teacher that Gramsci had the opportunity to write his first

newspaper report, in 19107. In 1919, in an article written as part of the successful

campaign that the Turinese socialists conducted among the Sardinian troops, Gramsci

referred to a popular Sardinian anthem against the feudal lords8, on which Garzia had

published a study in 18979.

The main influence on the young Gramsci in the field of historical linguistics and

dialectology came, however, from Matteo Bartoli – Gramsci‘s professor of glottology at

Turin University. Bartoli (1873-1946) had begun to teach there in 1907, after studying

and conducting research in different Italian and European universities, including

Vienna, Florence, Strasburg, and Paris10

. He soon became aware of the qualities of his

Sardinian student and, in the academic year 1912-13, asked Gramsci to transcribe and

edit the lecture notes of his course11

. Bartoli expected Gramsci to become an academic

linguist, yet these expectations were to remain unrealised. Though continuing to work


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on what should have been his thesis «on the history of language»12

for a few more

years, Gramsci eventually abandoned his university studies without graduating.

Echoes of Saussure’s ideas

1. The first element that needs to be taken into account, when discussing

Gramsci‘s ideas against the background of Saussurean linguistics, is the distinction

between the synchronic and the diachronic study of language. In his Prison Notebooks,

Gramsci writes about «historical grammar»13

, that is, the diachronic description of a

language; but he also points to the possibility of a synchronic description. Indeed, he

makes a clear distinction between the two viewpoints which Saussure (1959, 79 ff.)

terms «static and evolutionary linguistics» – the latter being occasionally referred to, by

Saussure too, as «historical grammar».14

According to Saussure, it is «the intervention of the factor of time that forces

linguists to chose between these two «divergent paths»15

. He compares the difference

between static and evolutionary linguistics to that between «political history» and «the

science of political institutions», yet he finds a more appropriate equivalence in the clear

duality that separates «political economy and economic history»16

. On the one hand,

linguistic signs form part of a system, in that the value of each sign is defined by its

relationship with the other signs belonging to the same language. Yet, on the other hand,

linguistic signs are not merely conventional – they are social and historical products.

The use that people make of a language through time contributes to redefining the

systematic relationships amongst its signs, as well as the way in which the signs of that

particular language indicate thoughts, purports, material objects and other extra-

linguistic entities.

The Course contains clear statements regarding the duality between «the system

of values per se and the same values as they relate to time»17

. This duality between

synchrony and diachrony is not only an epistemological device adopted by linguists for

the sake of a more accurate understanding of their subject matter; in actual fact, it is

inherent in the object of linguistics. Static phenomena, for instance, exist in the minds of

speakers, and are essentially the only ones that matter to them in their use of language18

.


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Similarly, Gramsci writes that the «the distinction and the identification of words and

concepts», when considered in relation to the «historical movement of the entire

language», turn out to change «through time», and to be «developing and not only

static»19

.

Referring to the synchronic description of a language Gramsci compares grammar

and photography, arguing that grammar «is the ―photograph‖ of a given phase of a

national (collective) language that has been formed historically and is continuously

developing, or the fundamental traits of a photograph»20

. Gramsci reiterates the

comparison with photography to indicate the synchronic description of the grammar of

a language. This description, which can be used for didactic and normative purposes,

presents the means of expression used by a linguistic community in «a given time and

place»21

, photographed «in one abstract moment»22

. Traditionally – as Saussure also

acknowledges23

– synchronic descriptions have indeed been used as «normative

grammars»24

, in which case they differ from historical grammar in the same way

«politics» differs from «history»25

.

A similar comparison of grammar and photography can also be found in

Saussure‘s Course in General Linguistics26

. Moreover, the idea of the synchronic

description of a language-state, from which «the intervention of time is excluded»27

, as

an operation of abstraction from the real, constantly changing existence of a language is

a landmark of Saussurean linguistics28

.

Finally, Gramsci also explains that, of course, grammarians cannot ignore the

history of the language they intend to describe; however, their work needs to be based

on the description of an ideally stable phase in the history of the language. Their work is

essentially one of synchronic description29

. This is consistent with Saussure‘s statement

that «the linguist can neither describe [a language] nor draw up standards of usage

except by concentrating on one state» of the language30

.

2. I shall now move on to Gramsci‘s views on the role of metaphors in language.

Through his remarks on this topic, Gramsci comes essentially to share three of the

general principles which are specific to Saussure‘s views, as expressed in the Course in

General Linguistics: a) that linguistic conventions are arbitrary, and thus different from

other social institutions which are to some degree based on the «natural relations of


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things»31

; b) that, instead of being fixed once and for all by the completely free decision

of an individual or a restricted group32

, linguistic conventions are the «product of social

forces»33

; and c) that linguistic conventions are «the heritage of the preceding period»,

since «social forces are linked with time»34

. Famously, the Course deals with both the

immutability and the mutability of linguistic signs (or, more precisely, of both the

systematic relationships amongst signs, and the internal relationship between the two

elements that constitute each sign – the signifier and the signified). The following

remarks are particularly worth quoting:

the sign is exposed to alteration because it perpetuates itself. What predominates in all

change is the persistence of the old substance; disregard for the past is only relative. That is

why the principle of change is based on the principle of continuity. Change in time takes

many forms […]. One might think that it deals especially with phonetic changes undergone

by the signifier, or perhaps changes in meaning which affect the signified concept. That

view would be inadequate. Regardless of what the forces of change are, whether in

isolation or in combination, they always result in a shift in the relationship between the

signified and the signifier.35

To a certain extent, Gramsci and Saussure were both influenced by the French

linguist Michel Bréal (1832-1915), who had been the initiator of modern semantics and

whose university courses Sasussure had attended while in Paris. Gramsci mentions

Bréal in the following passage:

All language is metaphor, and it is metaphorical in two senses: it is a metaphor of the

thing or material and sensible object referred to, and it is a metaphor of the ideological

meanings attached to words in the preceding periods of civilization. (A treatise on

semantics – for ex. Michel Bréal‘s – can provide a catalog of the semantic mutations of

different words).36

From these general assertions Gramsci derives two points which are in line with

Saussure‘s views: a rejection of what Gramsci calls «the utopia of fixed and universal

languages»37

– I shall return to this point later on – and a restriction of the explanatory

value of etymological analyses. For instance, in the Course one can read that all

definitions made with respect to a single word are made in vain38

, and that etymology

is the explaining of words through the historical study of their relations with other

words. To explain means to relate to known terms, and in linguistics, to explain a word


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is to relate it to other words . Similarly, in one of his prison letters, Gramsci observes

that «life formulas […] expressed in words» can easily lead to misleading

interpretations of the relationship between language and thought:

[…] Italians say: a happy night and not a tranquil night like the Germans, etc. It is quite

possible that the Germans, Russians, and also the French do not think of happy nights , but

the Italians also speak of a happy journey and of a happily concluded business deal that

diminishes the symptomatic value of happy ; on the other hand, the Neapolitans say about

a beautiful woman that she is buona good , certainly without malice, because beautiful

(bella) is in fact a more ancient bonula.40

Other instances of Gramsci‘s elaboration on the notion of metaphor can be found

in his prison notes. In Notebook 11, he specifies that «no new historical situation,

however radical the change that has brought it about, completely transforms language,

at least in its external formal aspect»41

; and that

[…] when a new conception of the world replaces the previous one, the previous language

continues to be used but is, precisely, used metaphorically. The whole of language is a

continuous process of metaphor, and the history of semantics is an aspect of the history of

culture; language is at the same time a living thing and a museum of fossils of life and

civilisations. When I use the word disaster no one can accuse me of believing in

astrology, and when I say by Jove! no one can assume that I am a worshipper of pagan

divinities.42

3. The third and last element which I would like to highlight is the caution

concerning language planning and artificial languages expressed, in similar terms, both

in the Course in General Linguistics and in the Prison Notebooks43

. Gramsci‘s sceptical

evaluation of artificial languages is consistent with Saussure‘s views on the aspiration to

create «a fixed language that posterity would have to accept for what it is»44

. In the

Course, this scepticism applies to Esperanto, and to any attempt at intervening in the

verbal communication patterns of a society. Saussure explains that languages, working

as systems, are complex mechanisms. One can legitimately expect to be able to modify

a linguistic system through the organised intervention of «specialists, grammarians,

logicians»45

; but experience shows us that such attempts have never produced major

results.


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The prescriptions of codes, religious rites, nautical signals, etc., involve only a certain

number of individuals simultaneously and then only during a limited period of time; in

language, on the contrary, everyone participates at all times, and that is why it is constantly

being influenced by all. This capital fact suffices to show the impossibility of revolution. Of

all social institutions, language is least amenable to initiative. It blends with the life of

society, and the latter, inert by nature, is a prime conservative force.46

Gramsci had already come close to these positions in an article of April 1916. He

had realised that the more a semiotic system becomes used by the masses, the less

possible it is for it to be revolutionised. Its signs and their denotative and connotative

meanings, as well as the senses that these meanings have in different contexts and to

different speakers, tend to escape the control of our will. Gramsci‘s reflections on this

point were inspired by the history of playing cards. In «times of upheaval», and of

«bestial hatred» against the past, revolutionaries tried to replace kings and queens with

bourgeois icons, such as republican fasces and the symbolic figures of Freedom and

Equality47

. While this bourgeois revolutionary spirit eventually came to an end, «the old

cards stayed», rooted as they are in the «mental habits» of their users. Hence Gramsci

concludes:

The old playing cards – which draw on medieval illuminations portraying Longobard kings

– have a language of their own, and nothing poses so many obstacles to innovations as

language does. So much so, that after many years Esperantists are still in the state of a

cocoon from which a butterfly is yet to emerge, despite the number of those who have taken

up their cause, from Leibniz to Dr Zamenhof.48

Attempts at creating a «perfect language»49

must have been familiar to Gramsci

since his early years at the University of Turin. Certainly, he studied there in the same

years as the renowned mathematician and logician Giuseppe Peano (1858-1932) was

teaching at this university. Peano wrote about the necessity of an international auxiliary

language, and created a simplified version of Latin to be used as «a written lingua

franca for international scientific communication»50

. Called latino sine flexione, this

universal language was meant to lessen what Peano considered to be the inherent

ambiguity, mutability and formal redundancy of natural historical languages51

. The

historian Angelo d‘Orsi, an expert on Gramsci‘s years in Turin, does not exclude the

possibility that Gramsci may have occasionally attended Peano‘s lectures, and also

points to the fact that his prison notes contain a number of references to Peano‘s work52

.


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Later, in 1918, Gramsci disagreed with other Italian socialists about the

desirability of the promotion by the Italian Socialist Party of the study and use of

Esperanto. In one of the articles he wrote as part of this controversy, he backs his

confutation of the desirability of learning artificial languages with the following

motivations: languages

are very complex and subtle organisms [...] Linguistic change is slow and only occurs as a

result of the new contacts that the life of complex societies brings about. Changes are

spontaneous and cannot be determined in an intellectualistic way.53

In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci confirms his disapproval of the «fanatical

advocates of international languages»54

, and his argument now receives further support

from his views on the role of metaphors in language. He qualifies his support for

language policies aimed at linguistically unifying Italy by warning, once more, about

the limits of language-policy interventions. These interventions should not be regarded

as decisive, nor should one assume that

the ends proposed will all be reached in detail, i.e. that one will obtain a specific unified

language. One will obtain a unified language, if it is a necessity, and the organised

intervention will speed up the already existing process. What this language will be, one

cannot foresee or establish.55

Methodological interlude

The similarities between Gramsci‘s views and those expressed in the Course in

General Linguistics, which I pointed out in the previous sections of this article, partly

coincide with – and partly need to be added to – other such similarities, as identified by

Lo Piparo, Salamini, Mansfield, Helsloot, Blasco Ferrer, Boothman, and Ives56

; as well

as by two experts of structural linguistics, Rosiello and De Mauro57

. Yet, no evidence

has been found which proves that Gramsci read the Course. This leads one to ask

whether, and to what extent, Gramsci knew Saussure‘s ideas on language.

There has been virtually no historical discussion on how much Gramsci knew

about Saussure‘s linguistics and – irrespective of whether or not he knew about it – on

the channels through which he might have come to be influenced by Saussure‘s ideas.


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Scholars have acknowledged the similarities between the two; but very little has been

put forward in terms of hypotheses that could lead to a historical reconstruction of how

Gramsci (whose reflections on language are chronologically subsequent to Saussure‘s)

might have been inspired by the contents of the Course. On the one hand, this situation

raises a question: though presumably indirect, how did the similarities between Gramsci

and Saussure come about? On the other hand, some methodological implications also

arise as to whether, and how, the origins of such an indirect influence may be identified.

I will briefly deal with this latter aspect in this section of my article, whereas an attempt

at answering the former question will be made in the next section.

In his 1948 lecture Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism, the art historian Erwin

Panofsky (1892-1968) – a classic representative of what is nowadays commonly

referred to as cultural history – argued that a connection can be observed between

Gothic art and Scholastic philosophy. This connection, which can be located in time and

space, is «more concrete than a mere ―parallelism‖», and yet more general than

individual influences between a certain artist and a certain philosopher by means of

«direct impact»58

. The kind of connection Panofsky has in mind comes about by the

dissemination of new concepts and approaches. In the case of Scholasticism and early

Gothic architecture, this dissemination may be relevant – Panofsky argues – for

explaining the similarities between the two. However, such forms of dissemination

occur in modern societies too, despite the increased level of technical specialisation and

disciplinary fragmentation. For instance, all of us, «without a thorough knowledge of

biochemistry or psychoanalysis, speak with the greatest of ease of vitamin deficiencies,

allergies, mother fixations, and inferiority complexes»59

.

Panofsky identifies his time- and space-located «channel of transmission» in the

(mainly artistic and philosophical) debates of late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century

Paris, and of its surroundings. Regarding this context, he explains that:

It is not very probable that the builders of Gothic structures read Gilbert de la Porrée or

Thomas Aquinas in the original. But they were exposed to the Scholastic point of view in

innumerable other ways, quite apart from the fact that their work automatically brought

them into a working association with those who devised the liturgical and iconographic

programs. They had gone to school; they listened to sermons; they could attend the public

disputationes de quolibet which, dealing as they did with all imaginable questions of the


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day, had developed into social events not unlike our operas, concerts, or public lectures;

and they could come into profitable contact with the learned on many other occasions.60

In the next section of my article I shall apply the method used by Panofsky to the

cultural network through which the contents of the Course in General Linguistics may

have influenced Gramsci. I will try to locate Gramsci‘s contacts with Saussure‘s thought

in time and in space, in a partial attempt to track down, as it were, the wide-ranging

workings of the zeitgeist. Arguably, not everyone will be satisfied with the methodology

and results of this attempt. Nonetheless, there is at least one, undoubted element of

usefulness about the descriptions of the intellectual networks operating in a certain

period. Even those who do not regard these descriptions as self-sufficient results will

find it hard to deny that these descriptions provide the search for new documentary

evidence with detailed hypotheses, and with suggestions for further excavation.

A possible channel of transmission

Gramsci sat his last university examination early in 1915, although he continued

to work more or less constantly on his thesis until 1918. Ferdinand de Saussure‘s

Course in General Linguistics was first published in 1916. The text of this first edition

was based on notes from the courses that Saussure taught at Geneva University in the

last years of his life, which two of his students, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye,

collected and edited. In Italy, one of the first scholars to review the Course was a young

lecturer at Turin University, Benvenuto Terracini, in 1919. Terracini had seen Gramsci

occasionally in library reading rooms, when the young Sardinian student was in close

contact with Matteo Bartoli61

. Terracini‘s highly informative review was published,

moreover, in a Turinese academic journal, the Bollettino di filologia classica62

, and

might therefore have been one channel through which Gramsci gained contact with

Saussure‘s concepts. However, by 1919 Gramsci had become absorbed by political

activities and militant journalism, so it is unclear whether he still had the time to read

academic periodicals that were mainly unrelated to his political commitments. Rather

than in university libraries, he was now spending much of his time in the editorial


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offices of the Turin socialist press, in the local sections of the Socialist Party, and in

various factories.

It can be assumed that Gramsci‘s familiarity with the works of Italian linguists,

starting from his years at Turin University, entailed some indirect knowledge of

Saussure‘s work. For instance, a very brief and generic reference to Saussure and the

distinction between diachrony and synchrony can be found in Giulio Bertoni‘s Principi

generali, part of Bertoni and Bartoli‘s Breviario di neolinguistica63

. Gramsci must have

known Bertoni‘s contribution to this volume, given that both his prison notes and letters

contain critical remarks on it. So, it might seem advisable to opt for a cautious

conclusion; namely, that Bartoli‘s courses (including bibliographical indications) and

general intellectual influence were the means by which the cultural atmosphere of the

time produced the affinities discussed above (as well as those highlighted by other

commentators). Apart from his university training, much must be left – if one takes this

cautious position – to Gramsci‘s life-long interest in philology and linguistics, as well as

his wide-ranging curiosity for new intellectual ideas64

.

Such a conclusion can be accepted, without further elaboration, as far as the

earlier affinities are concerned (from 1916 to 1921), including young Gramsci‘s

comments on language-policy interventions and artificial languages. However, I shall

now try to describe his post-university experiences in less general terms.

The central part of Gramsci‘s life, during which he travelled to Russia and

Austria, might be particularly helpful when trying to account for his affinities with

Saussure. The mediation of Gramsci‘s non-Italian cultural experiences and sources may

have led him to absorb the new notions introduced by the Course in a more specific

(though still indirect) way. In contrast, the general attitude of Italian culture – including

that of most Italian linguists – was not particularly receptive to Saussure‘s novelties and

specificities. The author of the Course was often regarded as a relatively unoriginal

exponent of the positivist, sociological approaches to the study of language that Italian

intellectuals, under the influence of the Idealist philosopher Benedetto Croce (1866-

1952), would typically frown upon65

.

Gramsci was more likely to learn about synchronic, structural research on

language through the political and scientific discussions that were taking place in

Russia, during the time he resided there; and, more generally, through his encounter


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with the intense research activities that accompanied the early stages of Soviet language

policy. To my knowledge, only one interpreter of Gramsci, Renate Holub, has pointed

in this direction, though with no explicit reference to the possible influence of the

Course. In the years from 1922 (when he left Turin for Russia) to 1926 (when he was

imprisoned), Gramsci

had a wide range of experiences. He had been one of the major leaders of the Italian

working-class movement, not only organizing political struggles but, as editor of a major

journal, the Ordine Nuovo, functioning as an organizer of the cultural and ideological

struggle as well. He [was] one of the top functionaries of the international working-class

movement, which accorded him the privilege to intervene personally in strategic decisions

at the centre of the international revolution: in Moscow. […] The period 1922-4 in Moscow

means the years of cultural and theoretical tension and excitement, […] the Russian

formalist school [...] and the beginnings of Russian structuralism with Roman Jakobson.66

Let me add some details to the picture sketched out by Holub. Gramsci lived in

Russia from June 1922 up until the end of November 1923, and again in March-April

1925. For quite a long time, it was generally believed that Gramsci had spent most of

his first, longer stay in Russia recovering from physical and mental exhaustion. Indeed

he was for a while in the Serebrianii Bor sanatorium (near Moscow), where he met

Eugenia Schucht and her sister, Giulia, who would later become his wife. But later

research has provided new information, presenting Gramsci as being more active, more

in contact with Soviet political and cultural life than was previously thought, and

therefore more likely to be in touch with the debates which characterised the politics of

language during the early years of the Soviet federative State. Gramsci actively

participated in the activities of the Communist International. He learnt Russian, as is

confirmed by the fact that at the end of 1923 he was able to undertake an Italian

translation of D.B. Riazanov‘s commentary to The Communist Manifesto67

. He also

travelled to a number of Russian cities and gave public speeches and lectures68

.

Gramsci‘s encounter with his wife‘s family, of which many members had been

engaged, or were engaged, in language teaching and translation69

, deserves attention. He

wrote at length about translation in some of his letters to his wife. His enduring interest

in language studies must have continued throughout the period he frequented the

Schuchts (between his arrival in Russia and his imprisonment), despite the fact that

linguistic themes did not loom large in his writings at that time. These writings dealt


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with predominantly political issues. However, he might have shared his interests in

language with his wife and, more or less directly, with her family.

That Gramsci‘s linguistic interests continued, while he was closest to his wife‘s

family, can be inferred from two letters which Tatiana Schucht wrote to her sister Giulia

in August 1928. In these letters, Tatiana makes revealing comments which cast light on

the importance that linguistics had in Gramsci‘s life between 1922 and 1926 (when he

saw his wife for the last time). While he was in prison, only one of the Schucht sisters,

Tatiana, lived in Italy. On 24 August 1928, Tatiana wrote to him that she would soon

ask Giulia to send, from Russia, a book by the Ukrainian philosopher of language

Aleksandr A. Potebnia (1835-1891). «They suggested this textbook to me» – she added

– «when they learnt about your interest in language studies»70

. This sentence elusively

refers to those connected to the Italian and international communist movement, who

were coordinating Tatiana‘s assistance to the prisoner. She constantly provided Gramsci

not only with practical aids, but also with cultural inputs and bibliographical updates.

She knew that she was writing in a country which was ruled by a politically hostile

dictatorship, and that her brother-in-law‘s correspondence was systematically checked

by his jailers. Hence she preferred to conceal the identity of her collaborators and

supervisors by using a sentence with no explicit subject71

. Six days later, on 30 August

1928, she wrote to Giulia:

you […] know how interested Antonio is in linguistics. I was told that you could have some

information about important books in this field from Lunacharskii – they say he is

interested in every subject, and would be very glad to give relevant advice.72

Soon after the October Revolution, language-policy issues had given rise to wide

and intense debates. Anatolii V. Lunacharskii, who was then at the head of

Narkompros73

, was just one of the communist leaders to join the debates. Trotsky and

Riazanov also contributed to them, as did Nadezhda K. Krupskaia – Lenin‘s wife.

Nikolai I. Bukharin and Evgenii A. Preobrazhenskii discussed the principles of Soviet

language policy in a chapter of their book The ABC of Communism, published in

191974

. In 1921, Bukharin also explored linguistic themes in a section dedicated to

Language and Thought, in Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology75

. In this

context, where specialism and disciplinary boundaries were insistently brought into

question, Gramsci would not have been led to regard debates on language as futile at all.


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The principles that Lenin had set out with respect to language and nationality76

had to be transformed into policy-making decisions, not only in Russia but also in some

of the most problematic contexts of non-Russian Soviet peripheries77

. The range of

topics discussed was extremely wide: non-Russian and minority languages; purist

reactions to language contacts and innovations; the language of the press; spelling

reforms; verbal impoverishment; and illiteracy. These debates, as illustrated by

Gorham78

, became particularly intense in the first half of the 1920s.

By 1923 serious efforts had been made to recruit the needed ethnographers, linguists and

statisticians to work on this effort; then in 1924, when the existence of the [Soviet] Union

itself was officially ratified, the task of defining and identifying nationalities began in

earnest.79

Linguists made their contribution to this work of spatial organisation and ordering

by providing accurate accounts of the relevant demarcations between languages.

Experiments in language teaching and public communication also absorbed their

energies. New approaches were devised, drawing first on insights from the two

dominant figures of pre-revolutionary Russian linguistics, Jan Ignacy Baudouin de

Courtenay (1845-1929)80

and Filipp F. Fortunatov (1848-1914), founders, respectively,

of the St. Petersburg and Moscow schools of linguistics. Structural methods began to

circulate, always in direct connection with glottopolitical issues, as forays into applied

linguistics and language reform. Inspired by «F.F. Fortunatov‘s empirical studies of

synchronic language forms, and by Jan Baudouin de Courtenay‘s insights into structural

phonology», Soviet Russia‘s linguists came to see themselves «as new scientists of the

human word»81

.

In the first half of the 1920s, Jakobson and Grigorii O. Vinokur, another member

of the Moscow Linguistic Circle, were amongst the first linguists to define the structural

study of languages as the proper ground for language planning. Vinokur worked in the

Soviet administration and diplomatic service as an interpreter, after having studied

philology at the University of Moscow between 1916 and 1922, and before obtaining an

academic position at the same university in the 1930s82

; and in the meantime, he also

became involved in the Futurist movement. True, not everyone wished to embark on a

close cooperation with the newly-established Bolshevik power. With the Revolution and


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the onset of the Civil War, Russia‘s community of linguists was shaken by the sudden

political changes that were taking place. Some preferred to leave the country:

N.S. Trubetskoi fled to Bulgaria and later Austria. Roman Jakobson eventually settled in

Czechoslovakia. Baudouin de Courtenay and V.K. Porzhezinskii, a leading Moscow

formalist, emigrated to Poland. For those who remained behind, life was both bleak and

exhilarating. […] They continued their novel approaches to language and their fascination

with its power to organize human experience, to shape people‘s worlds and provoke them

to action.83

Although variously interpreted and valued, Ferdinand de Saussure‘s theories were

indeed part of this extraordinarily rich and fluid intellectual environment (see Phillips

1986). As early as 1917-1919, «Moscow‘s discussion circles» began to learn about «the

Saussurean ―synchronic‖ method»84

from Sergei O. Kartsevskii, who had studied under

Saussure in Geneva. This «apostle of the Saussurian school», as Jakobson calls him,

«during his shortlived return to Russia, fired the young generation of Moscow linguists

with the Cours de linguistique générale and applied its precepts to the study of

contemporary Russian»85

. Both Kartsevskii and Jakobson were involved in the

«methodological controversy» on the separation between «synchronic and diachronic

linguistics»86

which sprang up among Russian scholars at the beginning of the 1920s.

Vinokur summarised the contents of Saussure‘s Course in articles published

between 1923 and 192587

. One of his articles – aimed at a wider readership than that of

professional linguists only – offers a programmatic description of the «static» study of

language as the most suitable approach for making linguistics a «socially useful»

discipline88

, and contains explicit references to Saussure‘s notion of synchronic

linguistics.

Vinokur‘s article was not an isolated case. As has been confirmed by research into

the history of Soviet linguistics, 1923 was the year which marked a turning point in the

history of the penetration of the Course into Russia. At least in St. Petersburg and

Moscow, some copies of this book had become available, and mentions of it began to

appear in Soviet journals89

:

References to Saussure and to his influence appear, critically filtered, in Jakobson‘s book

on Czech versification published in 1923. The same year, references to Saussure and his

Geneva school were made repeatedly in Russkaja rěc’ [Russian Language], a compendium


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of studies by several young Russian linguists mutually associated (as the editor of the

volume, Lev Ščerba, suggests in his introductory note) by their common dependence on the

linguistic teaching of Baudouin de Courtenay. Moreover, in 1923, the young syntactician,

M.N. Peterson, published a lucid outline of Saussure‘s fundamental concepts in the journal

Pečat’ i revoljucija [The Press and the Revolution].90

Finally, during 1923 – which Gramsci spent almost entirely in Russia – there were also

«oral presentations and debates devoted to the Course, which took place in diverse

scientific societies and research institutes of the time»91

. Over the next two years (1923-

1925), the contents of the Course were outlined and analysed not only in articles but

also in books. The Course was explicitly referred to, either as a starting point for

methodologically updated linguistic research, or as the object of radical philosophical

objections and criticisms.

Indeed, the circulation of Saussure‘s ideas must soon have become fairly wide, if

even a vehement critic of the Course – Valentin N. Voloshinov – openly recognised in

1929 that «the majority of Russian thinkers in linguistics are under the determinative

influence of Saussure and his disciples, Bally and Sèchehaye»92

. Voloshinov also noted

that, «puzzlingly enough», the Course had not yet been translated into Russian (the first

published translation dates from the early 1930s). However, he could indicate prominent

scholars who were followers of Saussure‘s approach: R.O. Shor, V.V. Vinogradov, and

M.N. Peterson (for discussion, see Slusareva 1963).

By 1922 A.I. Romm, another member of the Moscow Linguistic Circle, had

already translated much of the Course – although his translation was to remain

unpublished93

. Shared also by other members of the Circle, an orientation towards

applied linguistics emerges, interestingly enough, from the manuscript of Romm‘s

translation. He planned to add some notes relating Saussure‘s examples to the current

situation in the USSR, including some on the pressing issues of spelling reforms, the

alteration of the Russian language in the wake of the Revolution, and the uncontrolled

proliferation of acronyms and abbreviations (especially in the jargons of polit ics and

State administration)94

.

Even though the circulation of the Course remained limited,95

concepts which

were more or less directly inspired by Saussure spread widely across different fields. In

1922, Kartsevskii «applied the Saussurean synchronic approach to the description of the

Russian verbal system»96

. The following year, «V.V. Vinogradov […] proposed the


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application of a rigorous synchronic method to the analysis of style in verbal art»97

.

Similarly, other scholars and institutions contributed to the spread of synchronic

linguistics as a methodological basis for language policy and planning:

The Soviet government legitimized the role of structural principles […] through N.F.

Iakovlev‘s manifesto [published in 1922] in the journal Life of the nationalities […]. He

proudly recognized that his methods were based on the linguistic theories of two

innovators, Saussure and Baudouin. […] The historical-genealogical point of view was

dead, he proclaimed; now superseded by the unity of theory and practice in synchronic

linguistics.

Iakovlev institutionalized the Soviet project for language reform in the Moscow Linguistic

Circle, where he was chair beginning in 1923; and the Scientific Research Institute for the

Study of the Ethnic and National Cultures of the Peoples of the East, which he was

instrumental in creating between 1923 and 1926.98

The presence of up-to-date linguistic ideas and expertise within Soviet political

institutions is proved by the Bolshevik militancy of a prominent linguist such as Evgenii

D. Polivanov (1891-1938)99

, as well as by Vinokur‘s involvement in practical work

within such institutions. Other scholars also agreed to collaborate with Narkompros,

including R.O. Shor, mentioned above, and A.I Romm, the author of the first

(unpublished) Russian translation of the Course100

. In the early 1920s, also a former

student of Saussure‘s Parisian courses, F.A. Braun101

, was active at Narkompros. In the

same period, Gramsci‘s future sister-in-law, Eugenia Schucht, was working at

Narkompros, where she was secretary to Nadezhda Krupskaia. Gramsci‘s future wife,

Giulia, had also spent some months working for Narkompros, in 1919, as the secretary

of this institution‘s communist group102

.

In this context it is highly probable that Gramsci‘s curiosity was struck by the

ongoing debates, and that the most innovative theories circulated through to him. Even

if he did not learn much about either Saussure or his Course in General Linguistics,

Gramsci‘s thoughts on language could have been affected by ideas and debates that had

been inspired, more or less directly, by this book. In conclusion, if the question is

whether Gramsci read the Course in General Linguistics, existing evidence only allows

for a negative answer. It is not proved, nor does it seem likely, that Gramsci read the

Course103

. On the contrary, if what is asked is whether certain similarities between

Gramsci‘s ideas on language and the contents of the Course can be explained in terms


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of an indirect influence, then I believe the answer to be a positive one. Indeed, we have

enough evidence to deem an indirect influence of the Course on Gramsci highly

probable.

Saussure’s Structuralism and Gramsci’s Marxism

Gramsci and Saussure have become classic authors in the humanities and social

sciences. Their legacy has affected numerous disciplines, ranging from anthropology to

history, from literary criticism to philosophy, and their names are often mentioned

alongside those of György Lukács, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It is

therefore hardly surprising that many comparisons and parallels have been established

between the ideas of these fundamental authors, regardless of whether evidence does or

does not exist to prove that direct influences took place amongst them. Similarities and

linkages have indeed been investigated with respect to Gramsci and Lukács104

, Gramsci

and Bakhtin105

, and Gramsci and Wittgenstein106

– who influenced whom depending,

obviously, on the relative chronology of their works.

In the specific case of Saussure‘s Course in General Linguistics, what are the

benefits of studying the similarities and possible links between this book and Gramsci‘s

work? In other words, are Gramsci‘s contacts with Structuralist views of language

worth exploring? I believe this aspect to be relevant to the study of Gramsci‘s

intellectual biography. Contacts with linguistic thought would seem to have helped his

Marxism to acquire that language-sensitive complexity, largely unaffected by

dogmatism or economicist determinism, which interpreters have increasingly been

identifying in his Prison Notebooks107

. In this article, I have confined my discussion to

Gramsci‘s ideas on language. Further research would be necessary to ascertain whether

the influence of early linguistic Structuralism contributed to shaping also other

Gramscian concepts. Should this be the case, we would be much more able to explain

why his ideas remained relevant throughout the second half of the twentieth century,

when essentialist (or reductionist) versions of Marxism, which presented the hard facts

of economic production as the determinant factors in shaping conflicting worldviews

and in activating historical processes, appeared to lose much of their philosophical and


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political value108

. Especially during the last three decades of the century, the

epistemological foundations of various disciplines, including political theory, were

indeed greatly influenced by general linguistics and language philosophy, in what has

come to be known (mostly in the wake of Rorty 1967) as the «linguistic turn».


Isonomia 2010

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Notes

1 E.g. Boothman 2008a, 2008b. 2 Helsloot (2005, 235). Helsloot also states that the existing literature is still limited and demands

expansion. Any relevant publication on Gramsci’s theory of language would be a welcome addition . 3 I shall not consider other works by Sasussure, as none of them enjoyed the same influence, or produced

a similar wave of theoretical innovation. His work on Indo-European historical linguistics was influential

mostly amongst linguists specialising in this field, whereas his writings on general linguistics (most of

which have been published for the first time only in recent years) have not had the same impact as the

Course. See De Mauro’s introductions and commentaries to Saussure (2005a; 2005b); see also Lepschy

(1982), Harris (2003), and Sanders (2004). 4 See Deias 1997, 60. 5 See Gramsci 1992, 71. 6 See Podda 1999, 183. Also appreciated as a writer and philologist, Raffa Garzia would later teach

Sardinian linguistics at the University of Cagliari between 1927 and 1930 (see Angioni 1987, 23; Romagnino 2005; see also Podda 1977). 7 See Bergami 1993, 137 ff.; Fiori 1966, 68-9. 8 For a modern edition of this anti-feudal anthem see Mannu 2002; and for an early English translation,

Tyndale 1849, III, 281-92. 9 See Caprioglio 1982; Romagnino 2005, 150-52. 10 On Bartoli, see De Mauro (1964; 1996), Devoto (1947; 1973), Terracini (1948), and Vidossi (1948). 11 See De Felice 1964. 12 Gramsci 1982, 613. When quotations are taken (as in this case) from untranslated works, I have

provided my own translation. In all other cases, I have used published English translations (see list of

references). 13 See especially Notebook 29. 14 This, in spite of the fact that Saussure (1959, 134) explicitly condemns historical grammar as a

contradictory definition, stating that the discipline so labeled is really only diachronic linguistics . At

least in one case, Gramsci, too, seems to have had reservations as to the use of historical grammar –

when he incidentally notes that the history of language may be a better definition (Gramsci 1985, 185). 15 Saussure 1959, 79. 16 Ibid. 17 Ivi, 80. 18 See ivi, 81, 90, 100, and 183-4. 19 Gramsci 1971, 38. Rather misleadingly, the word only does not appear in Hoare and Nowell Smith’s

translation. I restored it in order to reflect Gramsci’s reasoning, as expressed in the Italian original

(Gramsci 1975, 1544-45), more accurately. 20 Gramsci 1985, 179-80. 21 Ivi, 120. 22 Gramsci 1971, 39. 23 Cf. Saussure 1959, 1 and 82-3. 24 Gramsci 1985, 185. 25 Ibid. 26 See Saussure 1959, 212 ff. 27 Ivi, 80. 28 «An absolute state is defined by the absence of changes, and since language changes somewhat in spite of everything, studying a language-state means in practice disregarding changes of little importance, just

as mathematicians disregard infinitesimal quantities in certain calculations, such as logarithms. […]

Besides, delimitation in time is not the only difficulty that we encounter in defining a language-state:

space presents the same problem. In short, a concept of a language-state can be only approximate. In

static linguistics, as in most sciences, no course of reasoning is possible without the usual simplification

of data (Saussure 1959, 101-102). 29 See Gramsci 1985, 179-81. 30 Saussure 1959, 81-82. 31 Ivi, 75-6 and 80. 32 Ivi, 71-2 and 78.


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33 Ivi, 74. 34 Ibid. 35 Saussure 1959, 74-5. Emphasis in the original. 36 Gramsci 2007, 886. Gramsci refers to the Essai de sémantique (Bréal 1897). 37 Gramsci 1971, 451. 38 Saussure 1959, 14. 39 Ivi, 189. 40 Gramsci 1994, II, 34. It is interesting to note the chronological proximity between this letter, written on

18 May 1931, and the first draft of the previous passage on language and metaphors, which Gramscian

scholars have dated to the Spring of 1931 (see Francioni 1984; 1992). 41 Gramsci 1971, 453. 42 Ivi, 450. Hoare and Nowell Smith’s translation has conception instead of conception of the world –

the latter being, I believe, closer to the original (cf. Gramsci 1975, 1438). In the same notebook Gramsci

also writes: Language is transformed with the transformation of the whole of civilisation, through the

acquisition of culture by new classes and through the hegemony exercised by one national language over

others, etc., and what it does is precisely to absorb in metaphorical form the words of previous

civilisations and cultures. Nobody today thinks that the word “dis-aster” is connected with astrology or

can claim to be misled about the opinions of someone who uses the word. Similarly even an atheist can

speak of “dis-grace” without being thought to be a believer in predestination (etc.). The new

“metaphorical” meaning spreads with the spread of the new culture, which furthermore also coins brand-

new words or absorbs them from other languages as loan-words giving them a precise meaning and

therefore depriving them of the extensive halo they possessed in the original language (Gramsci 1971,

451-52). As recounted by the famous linguist Roman Jakobson (1959, 234): In the first years of the

Russian revolution there were fanatic visionaries who argued in Soviet periodicals for a radical revision

of traditional language and particularly for the weeding out of such misleading expressions as “sunrise” or

“sunset”. Yet we still use this Ptolemaic imagery without implying a rejection of Copernican doctrine .

See also Bukharin (1926, 31): Many oppose the conception of causality and law in nature with the

argument that […] this conception is itself the result of an erroneous assumption of a celestial lawgiver.

No doubt that is the origin of the idea, but the idea has left its origin far behind. Language presents many

cases of such evolution. When we say, for example, “the sun has come up”, “the sun has gone down”, of

course we do not believe that the sun has actually “come”, or “gone”, as a man comes or goes, on two

legs, but that was probably the original conception. Similarly, in the case of the word “law”, we may say that “a law prevails”, or “applies”, which by no means signifies that the two phenomena (cause and

effect) involve any third invisible little god, lodged in the cause, reins in hand . Gramsci knew Historical

Materialism, the book by Bukharin (first published in Russian in 1921) from which I have taken my

quotation. He used Bukharin’s book in 1925, when preparing the teaching materials of a correspondence

school for communist militants (Gramsci 1988), and he also discussed it in his Prison Notebooks. 43 Bréal (1901) had also been rather critical of universal, artificial languages. 44 Saussure 1959, 76. 45 Ivi, 73. 46 Ivi, 73-4. 47 Gramsci 1980, 283. 48 Ivi, 284. 49 Eco 1995. 50 Ivi, 323. 51 See De Mauro 1996b; Vercillo 2004. 52 See d‘Orsi 1999, 47-48; and d‘Orsi 2002, 157. Peano had already devised his project for an

international auxiliary language when Gramsci arrived in Turin. He continued to promote this project

during the years when Gramsci was intensely participating in the cultural and political life of the city (i.e.,

from 1911 until 1922). 53 Gramsci 1982, 593. 54 Gramsci 1985, 182. Esperanto was the most famous, and successful, artificial language. For a time, it appeared to be a viable option for universal communication, enjoying, as such, a certain degree of

support. Roman Jakobson respected its elegance (Smith 1997, 77). Stalin studied it as a young man.

Some linguists (Baudouin de Courtenay, Otto Jespersen, Nikolai I. Marr, Antoine Meillet) were amongst

its convinced supporters, as were some leading philosophers and scientists, notably Bertrand Russell and


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Rudolph Carnap (see Eco 1995, 326). In the USSR, Esperantism would become outdated in the late

1920s, but up to then it met with mostly positive reactions, and was sometimes welcomed by fanatical,

visionary enthusiasts (see Smith 1997; Gorham 2003). A special government commission, in cooperation

with leading Esperantists, called for its elective teaching in the public schools (Smith 1997, 78). Some

communists proposed the introduction of Esperanto as the working language of their party’s Central

Committee and in other Soviet institutions. These communists worked for the popularisation of

Esperanto, and some even called for its compulsory teaching in secondary schools. Some of Soviet

Russia’s most fervent advocates of the use of Esperanto, as an auxiliary international language for more

rational human communication, were Ernst Drezen (first, and last, president of the Soviet Esperanto

Union, founded in 1921) and his collaborators. They constituted a radical fringe of the Taylorist and

Bogdanovite movement (Smith 1997, 79). Aleksandr A. Bogdanov (1873-1928) was a Russian

physician, philosopher, economist, and science fiction writer. In the first decade of the twentieth century

he was also a Bolshevik leader, until his views came into conflict with those held by Lenin. Apparently,

his death was the result of medical experiments that he was conducting on himself. In fact, Bogdanov

accepted the successes of Esperanto quite grudgingly, remaining wary of the utopianism underlying

artificial languages; however, he and those of his followers who supported Esperanto were united by a

common interest in radical social engineering. To their eyes, economic and administrative modernisation

could be enhanced through a more effective use of language. Gramsci was sensitive to the influence of

Soviet debates on Taylorism (and on the scientific organisation of labour in general) and – according to Bermani (1995) and Sochor (1981, 60) – also to Bogdanov’s views. In his discussion of grammar and

national linguistic unification, in Notebook 29, Gramsci (1985, 181 and 186) incidentally referred to the

Taylor System ; yet, he did not accept either the visionary aspects, or the utopian expectations of social

and communicative palingenesis, which often characterised Soviet debates. While Gramsci was writing

his prison notes, in the years of the consolidation of Stalin’s power, Soviet Esperantism received a new

lease on life […] in the service of a vital national interest, the Second Five-Year Plan (Smith 1997, 154-

55). Michael Smith describes this phase in detail in his highly informative book, Language and Power in

the Creation of the USSR, which is based on Soviet publications and archive documents dating from the

years 1917-1953. The second Five-Year Plan took place from 1933 to 1937. During this period, Drezen

began to work on the full unification of terms and symbols within the theoretical, technical, and applied

disciplines. He even aimed for the “fixation of terms for each mechanical component of each elemental

process”. His goal, to repudiate every “figurative and allegorical style” in order to avoid the “imprecision

and multiple meanings of different expressions” (Smith 1997, 155). With respect to language as a

source of error , and the creation of a “mathematical” language as a viable remedy, Gramsci (1971,

452) wrote in one of his notes: is it possible to remove from language its metaphorical and extensive

meanings? It is not possible . 55 Gramsci 1985, 183. Emphases in the original. 56 See Lo Piparo 1979, 110 note 53, 249; Salamini 1981; Mansfield 1984; Helsloot 1989; Blasco Ferrer

1999; Boothman 2004, 33-45; Ives 2004a; 2004b. 57 Rosiello (1969; 1976; 1986); De Mauro (1999). 58 Panofsky 1951, 20. 59

Ivi, 21. 60 Ivi, 23. 61 See Zucaro 1957, 1094-5. 62 See Terracini 1919. 63 See Bertoni and Bartoli 1928, 17. 64 In March 1927 Gramsci wrote to his sister-in-law, Tatiana Schucht, about his intention to carry out a

methodological and theoretical study of comparative linguistics. In the same letter, he also referred to his

deserting a potentially successful career in language studies: A major intellectual ―remorse‖ of my life is

the deep sorrow that I caused my good professor Bartoli at the University of Turin (Gramsci 1994, I, 84).

Shortly afterwards, in April, Amadeo Bordiga (the first secretary of the Italian Communist Party) wrote to

Gramsci from the isle of Ustica, where he had been sent by the fascist regime, and where Gramsci also

spent a period of political confinement (December 1926-January 1927) before being transferred to a

prison in Milan. Dearest Antonio , wrote Bordiga, you have been receiving printed matter, including a

booklet by the Geneva philological school, which that faculté sent you asking for your comments (first

published in Gerratana 1975, 152).


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65 This is not to say that Italian culture was impervious to Saussurean linguistics. In the late ‘20s and early

‘30s, editorial notes mentioning Saussure, and brief discussions of Saussurean distinctions between, for

example, synchronie and diachronie, or langue and parole, appeared in journals that Gramsci received

either regularly or occasionally while he was in prison (see Gramsci 1975, 3141-60; Gramsci 1996, 508-

509, 818). Such mentions were to be found especially in the journal La Cultura, which published articles, reviews, and editorial notes that contained references to Saussure – including some by leading linguists

such as Giacomo Devoto (1928) and Roman Jakobson (1933). The diffusion of Saussurean linguistics

was probably also boosted, to an extent, by the Third International Congress of Linguists, which was held

in Rome in 1933 (see Terracini 1933). 66 Holub 1992, 17-18. 67 See Gramsci 1988, 61-208; Gramsci 1992, 148 ff. David B. Gol‘dendakh, better known as Riazanov,

had joined the Socialist movement before Lenin. He supported the Bolsheviks during the revolutionary

events of 1917 but soon came into conflict with the party, and denounced the brutal and arbitrary use of

force that was being made. His appointment as director of the Marx-Lenin Institute was, to a large extent,

a measure taken to relegate him to the margins of political life. Under Stalin, he was accused of having

never really stopped being a Menshevik and, on the basis of this and other allegations, removed from his post and exiled. His commentary to The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was

translated into English (see Ryazanoff 1930). 68

See Kopalkidi and Leontiev 2001; Grigor‘eva 1998; Bergami 1991. When Russian names are part of

bibliographical references given in parenthesis, they are reproduced as printed in the referenced item. The

original transliteration has also been left unmodified in quotations. 69 See Cambria 1976; Gramsci Jr. 2007; 2008. 70 Gramsci and Schucht 1997, 248. 71 I have rendered the Italian verbal phrase mi hanno suggerito , used by Tania, with the English

pronominal subject they . This translation conveys the idea of more than one person communicating

with Tania, which would not be as evident in translations such as It was suggested to me . 72 Schucht 1991, 42. 73 Acronym for Narodnyi komissariat prosveshcheniia (The People‘s Commissariat of Enlightenment).

This was the Bolshevik reinvention of the Ministry of Education (Gorham 2003, 10). 74 See Bukharin and Preobrazhensky 1969, 241-54. 75 Bukharin 1926. 76 See Lenin 1983; Marcellesi and Eliman 1987; Carlucci 2007. 77 See Goldhagen 1968; Kirkwood 1989; Zubov 1994. 78 Gorham 2003. 79 Grenoble 2003, 39. 80 This Polish-born linguist taught Indo-European and Slavonic comparative grammar, and later also

comparative linguistics, in various universities, including Cracow and Warsaw (Tagliavini 1982, 578).

From 1900 to 1918 he was a professor at the University of St. Petersburg (see Lewiki 1996a). Tagliavini

indicates Baudouin‘s school as the Kazan School , and so do Voloshinov (1986, 59 note 22) and

Morpurgo Davies (1998, 227). This designation is based on the fact that before moving to St. Petersburg,

Baudouin de Courtenay taught from 1874 to 1883 at Kazan University (Alpatov 2004, 74 note 6).

Baudouin achieved a prominent position within European language studies of the late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries. His relations with Saussure, who held him in high esteem, are highlighted in

Tullio De Mauro‘s commentary to the Italian edition of the Course (see Saussure 2005a, 305-10), and

help to explain why Russian academic institutions offered a particularly receptive environment for the

propagation of the ideas expressed in the Course. But Baudouin‘s contribution to linguistics was neither

of a purely theoretical kind, nor restricted to technical questions: Baudouin is now widely recognised as

one of the founders of modern linguistics, through both his revolutionising of phonetics and his

methodological delineation of the language sciences. Baudouin‘s study of the formation of the Polish language and his studies of Slavonic dialects, along with his personal contacts with major European

linguists such as Saussure, Hermann Paul and Graziadio Ascoli are increasingly recognized as having

exerted a lasting and reciprocal influence on Slavonic and general European linguistic sciences […] In

addition to this, Baudouin, a political activist and staunch opponent of Russian imperialist policies,

repeatedly stressed the need for a meeting of linguistic and social science, but he found both disciplines to

be at too rudimentary a level of development to pursue this agenda himself. While teaching at St.


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Petersburg University […], Baudouin passed this concern on to his students Polivanov, Iakubinskii, Larin

and Zhirmunskii, who also shared their teacher‘s radicalism (Brandist 2003, 215). 81 Smith 1997, 9. 82 Lewiki 1996b, 975. 83 Smith 1997, 59. 84 Ivi, 60. 85 Jakobson 1956, 10. 86 Matejka 1986, 165. 87 These articles were collected in Vinokur‘s book Kul’tura iazyka (Language Culture) which had two

editions, in 1925 and 1929. 88 Vinokur 1923, 104-5. 89 See Depretto-Genty 1986, 81. 90 Matejka 1986, 162. 91 Depretto-Genty 1986, 82; see also Ageeva 2009, 75. 92 Vološinov 1986, 58-9. 93 See Čudakova and Toddes 1982. 94 See Depretto-Genty 1986, 86; Čudakova and Toddes 1982, 72-3. 95 Only a few copies of the book were available in the early ‘20s (see Vinokur 1923, note 2). 96

Matejka 1986, 165. 97 Ibid. 98 Smith 1997, 70. 99 Polivanov‘s life is tragically emblematic of the circumstances that many linguists experienced through

the different phases of the Soviet regime. He graduated from St. Petersburg University in 1912.

Renowned as a linguist for his specialisation in Turkic and East Asian languages, he was committed to

revolutionary politics, joining the Communist Party and working as a translator for the People‘s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and the Communist International between 1917 and 1921. His views on

language were condemned in 1927, when he was the president of the linguistic section of the Russian

Association of Scientific Research Institutions of the Social Sciences. This resulted in his exile to

Uzbekistan. Ten years later he was arrested, and he was finally executed in January 1938 at the age of 47. 100 See Čudakova and Toddes 1982, 66-7. As the New Economic Policy (1921-1928) became established

and some economic stability was achieved after the Civil War, the new approaches to language

developed within institutions that were either within the orbit of Party or State control (Brandist 2008,

280). 101 Braun studied at St. Petersburg University between 1880 and 1885, where he later worked as professor

of German philology. After the October Revolution, Braun worked at Narkompros, where he joined

committees dealing with school and university reform. In 1921 he also carried out research in

Scandinavia and Germany, and in 1922 Narkompros sent him to Berlin to supervise the compilation of a

bibliography of recent German scientific publications (see Lepschy 1979). 102 See Fiori 1991, 51; Lepre 1998, 43-5; Leontiev 1999; Kolpakidi and Leontiev 2001. 103 In the early ‘30s, Gramsci read a review article in which the recent developments in linguistics were

briefly discussed, and Saussure was mentioned by name (Coppola 1930, 623). It appears to me that much

has changed , Gramsci (1985, 177) observed, in a somewhat puzzled tone. He would not seem to have

taken any notice of the reference to Saussure. 104 See Holub 1992. 105 See Brandist 1996a; 1996b; Ives 2004b. 106 See Davis 2002; Sen 2003; 2004. 107 For a particularly influential example of this interpretative trend see Hall (1991). On the originality of Gramsci‘s Marxism, remarkably well-balanced and insightful contributions have been made by

Hobsbawm (1982), Paggi (1984), Femia (1987), and Bobbio (1990). Though concerned mostly with

historical (pre-Structuralist) linguistics and dialectology, Lo Piparo‘s (1979) study of the influence of

linguistics on Gramsci‘s thought remains an essential reading. 108 See Callinicos 1982.

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